describing a [library] workplace as “family”

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Recently I referred to someone’s “meeting the library family” with CRINGE. I wasn’t ready to share my thoughts about that term being used in a workplace/organization/institution, but some weeks ago I watched the docu-series Working: What We Do All Day on Netflix. Barak Obama follows up on Studs Terkel’s 1974 book of interviews with working people, today’s working people.

At some point in Episode 2: The Middle, Obama says something along the lines of “this is a family and folks look out for you…” And this is a total paraphrase from Luke: “When somebody says you’re in a family, usually that’s a bad job.“

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Yup.

I forget when someone in my workplace described us as “library family,” but it was early in my career. We “take care” of each other. Love each other. Words, but no caretaking from the powerful. Everyone working in the library was expected to take care of one person. You couldn’t say no. We were told via email to sign up for transportation shifts to take this person to physical therapy, the grocery store, feed their cats, run errands on their behalf, and it would be counted as part of our work time. We were told to visit this person in the hospital and see what items to fetch from their home for their use in the hospital. This person called their staff when they had a leak or an emergency at home. Their direct reports came to their home and helped them.

Maybe some people, somewhere have warm fuzzy feelings about their “work fam,” but I never have because my experience of that was manipulative and compulsory. And for a decade or so, I was the only person of my generation working amongst the librarians. They were cliquish and excluded me, even when I asked to join their writing group.

My first response to nearly every question is “Review The Literature,” but I haven’t in this case. I like to back up what I write with data.

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If you’re on the job market and hear the library, the workplace, the organization, the institution referred to as a FAMILY, this is a red flag. The way I read it is: You/I am the child in this dynamic. You/I will be parentified. This is when parents expect children to be the caregiver. In the workplace, this means that all the sacrifices are made by you, because we’re a family. We’re tight. We’re in this together.

Surely some people, like those in marketing and PR, use this type of branding to signify some kind of down-homey close-knit feel, they’re selling a potential experience of familial warmth and belonging to lure in the unwitting and I believe that is disingenuous.

I think of Leo Tolstoy when I think of families. He wrote, in Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” which I paraphrase as “every family is dysfunctional, some more than others.”

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My families–birth and blended–failed me in a lot of ways that I’ve spent my adulthood recovering from. Invoking the “we’re a happy family” card, if you will, to describe a workplace clangs alarm bells in my brain. I love my birth and blended fam but I don’t have to like them. And I don’t have to love OR like my work fam. That seems like an idyllic dream. I can/do dream.

What’s unusual for me right now is the amount of television/streaming that I’m consuming. Loving The Bear for so many reasons, but it’s a great example of toxic kitchen workplaces. All the yelling, the screaming, the violence, whoa.

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Some of the phrases that came up in seasons one were “You can’t start with fucked” meaning that when you inherit a fucked up organization, you’re bound to fail.

Another was “The chef was a piece of shit” regarding why Carmine experiences tremendous anxiety, nightmares, and what looks like PTSD from workplace abuse.

And the last thing, that I identify with most strongly is “A big part of the job is taking care of people.” And that makes me think that if you aren’t a people-person and lack empathy, then I’m not sure what workplace is a good fit.

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Also picked up on a lot of “workplace culture” by watching FUBAR, the new Arnold Schwarzenegger Netflix series about a father and daughter who learn that they’re both in the CIA after he’s sent in to rescue her before retiring. Obviously, I don’t know how the CIA works. But some of the situations and humor visible in this show…. far-fetched, I’m sure.

Two of the CIA operatives are always “sack tapping” each other (not the father/daughter), which is such a vile bodily violation, omg. Still unpacking this show, but the people working together are bio and work fam, which promises (and delivers) fascinating dynamics and situations.

48 hours of interview anxiety

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Who hasn’t experienced a train wreck of an employment interview? Fleeting memories of past interviews cycle through my head, and I don’t want to re-visit them. Am glad they’re in the past.

Ian Ross Hughes covers that in his chapter “Mental illness and the in-person interview” within LIS Interrupted. Disclosure: I know Ian professionally. We were matched as part of an ALA mentoring program between new librarians and established librarians years ago and we follow each other on social media.

Almost immediately I was shocked that someone at the interviewing library remarked on his trench coat and made awful insinuations about him coming in to shoot up the place. That’s a terrible way to begin a day. Ian describes the day, or days, as “meeting the library family,” at which I cringed (another post, another time).

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There are always problems when creating an agenda for a person’s interview. As a search committee chair and search committee member, I’ve advocated on the candidates’ behalf for more time to rest. And believe it or not, I’ve experienced lively debates on whether to end the interview with a dinner, even though we began with a dinner the previous day. In retrospect, asking the candidate about their preferences seems the best course of action. Ian writes “If the day is not well planned, or clear objectives are not set, the day can be further complicated.” He also reminded me about eating and meals and how this activity can be a point of stress for people with disordered eating or whose dietary restrictions may be challenging for libraries with very little experience handling that type of diversity.

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The public speaking aspect of library interviews gets to us all. Most entry-level positions in academic libraries require a presentation to those working in the library, and sometimes others from campus are invited to attend as well. Ian reminds us that body language and speech patterns we exhibit while speaking may not be due to nervousness, but manifest as part of a person’s mental illness and people should not be judged a poor fit for the job or organization based on those visible things.

In closing, he makes a case for “eliminating superficial barriers and hiring the best candidate” as the goal.

leading with vulnerability

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After nearly every talk/workshop/presentation I give I’m thanked by the organizer/facilitator for my vulnerability. Sometimes I feel as though I’m oversharing. But mostly, I’m just honest about the everyday mental health struggles I experience in my library workplace and how I establish boundaries with others to protect myself and my energy. Last blog, I shared about my library-induced panic attacks.

Here, a back channel exists in which check in with each other to learn about the “mood of the day.” Sharing this information with each other helps us pre-game meetings by taking anti-anxiety meds. Incidentally, centrally organized library back channels exist for BIPOC who want information about safe places where one can thrive: Greenbook for libraries.

Today I read Karina Hagelin’s “Surviving to thrive: creating a culture of radical vulnerability in libraries” which exists within LIS Interrupted. I’ve co-presented with them and admired their work a great deal and was pleasantly surprised when I saw their essay in the collection. Karina inspires my professional vulnerability.

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Yet, I’m also exhausted by remaining silent, pretending, and performing collegiality in the workplace. Those actions, or lack of actions, daily impinge upon my sense of integrity. Martha Beck and Gabor Mate both write about how both our integrity is tied to our mental/physiological health. They’re negatively affected when we revert to our socially constructed “good girl” “good boy” “good child” personas instead of speaking the truth.

Karina defines radical vulnerability as “a praxis and a strategy of sharing openly about experienced, identities, and satires that have been stigmatized and weaponized against us, in order to keep us quiet, small, and powerless.”

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How often do you surface act? It’s part of the emotional labor that many of us are expected to perform daily in our workplaces, both with the people we help as well as our colleagues and administrators. Karina describes this as “forcing a smile during a challenging experience” when actually you don’t want to smile. You want to scream or cry or leave the space immediately. They also write that answering something as simple as “How are you?” is stressful.

We follow social scripts in our lives. We’re programmed to ask others “How are you?” and the expected response is “Fine, how are you?” Admittedly, it’s a struggle for me to answer this honestly. I’m usually not fine at all. Yet I don’t want to share how I’m really feeling for a variety of reasons. First, it’s a matter of privacy; it’s not everyone’s business. Second, I don’t feel safe sharing how I truly feel, especially with an abuser. Keeping my boundaries engaged takes so much energy and forethought. I spend some time fabricating a benign yet truthful answer when an abuser asks “How is your Monday?” My answer: “Well… it’s a Monday…” which answers vaguely, and truthfully, so I’m not lying or pretending, or performing collegiality.

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Karina recommends we act in a manner that contributes to a culture of empathy and vulnerability. This includes showing up for others, holding space for others, and letting co-workers know they’re not alone, that we are someone whom they can trust.

panic in the library

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This weekend I reminisced about my bitten-to-the quick fingernails as a child. I also ripped off my toenails and battled with painful ingrown toenails that my mother had to free. Sure, I was an anxious child. But in the 1970s and 1980s that wasn’t talked about or recognized. Why didn’t any adult ask me why I self-harmed? I do remember my parents’ friend N. who they always described as “nervous” because he had a few noticeable symptoms like jitteriness and over-sensitivity.

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As a child, and a teen, I always felt safe in libraries. I escaped bullies by hiding in my junior high library. I delayed going home after school to an empty house by taking the bus downtown to my public library, where I spent so much time I decided to volunteer and “work” there. And essentially spend the majority of my professional life working in libraries.

May is mental health awareness month. I’m aware of my mental health everyday. As a leader, I’m aware of my library workers’ mental health, too. Daily check ins, just chatting with them, alerts me to any soothing or calming that I can do to ease their time in our workplace. Or refer them to use their EAP benefits. Or tell them “it’s not like this everywhere.” But, am I lying? Are there healthier libraries functioning with less organizational-induced distress?

I’ve had LIS Interrupted on my desk at work for weeks now, and love scanning the table of contents. I’m committed to reading at least one chapter each week during May to learn more about how others working in libraries experience our organizations. There is power in learning that we are not alone in our struggles. Feeling alone and isolated sucks.

Yet, being open about mental health and disability in the workplace is fraught. I attended a meeting about disability at ACRL a few months ago and was shocked to learn that many people are cautious about sharing information about disabilities and mental health with library administration and/or their colleagues.

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A few days ago I emailed my team and let everyone know that I had a panic attack at work and this dis-regulated me greatly. I apologized ahead of time in case I seemed distracted/unfocused/disassociated, didn’t respond to email in a timely manner, or that my communication was riddled with errors.

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I’ve had two or three panic attacks at home, but the majority of my panic attacks happen in my library and are work-related. I grow angry at myself because my body feels so out of control, so overreactive. I can listen and acknowledge what I experience, try a few grounding exercises, but I lose a lot of “productivity” due to situations beyond my control. And while my mind tells me to shake it off, my body has its own agenda.

library workers on May Day 2023

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Last month we celebrated National Library Workers Day on April 25. My mom sent me a card. My library didn’t mention it.

Today is International Worker’s Day.

Some facts from the DPE:

Librarianship is overwhelmingly white (82%).

And old (31% over 55).

And underpaid for work in which undergraduate and graduate degrees are often required for entry-level positions.

Average and median salaries are listed as: $69,070 and $64,180. There’s regional and institutional variance.

As a feminized profession (82% women), pay and benefits may lag behind other industries since some library systems don’t offer health insurance, retirement plans, or paid leave. People working in libraries experience the glass ceiling and the glass escalator. They’re expected to perform emotional labor. Some aspects of their work are invisible labor (thanks, feminists, for offering this dynamic to the workplace).

According to Anne Helen Peterson and Joshua Dolezal and Xochitl Gonzalez Library workers are not okay. Peterson’s pronouncement came after keynoting the CALM conference in 2022. She cites burnout and demoralization. This year, Dolezal writes about the attack on tenure status of academic librarians being stripped away. And also in 2023, Gonzalez cataloged hate emails and threats that librarians get nowadays with rampant book banning and challenges.

Let us celebrate reform–the kind that is pro-worker, not pro-business– and revolution by dipping into a bit of Marx. Let us take our two 15-minute mandated breaks, and our one hour for lunch to honor the actions and sacrifices of our foremothers and forefathers who fought for us to have an eight hour day, five day week. And also, because we deserve those breaks. They are necessary for self-care.

unbroken: the trauma response is never wrong [book review]

Reading is something I do for leisure, for escape, and for continuing education. Since my work in trauma-informed libraries is SO trauma-focused, keeping abreast of what experts in the field publish is essential so that I can share the latest trends with my audiences.

Last week I read Unbroken: The trauma response is never wrong. What’s also super cool and serendipitous is another book she wrote: Merleau-Ponty and a phenomenology of trauma. Huge Merleau-Ponty fan.

If you’re new to reading about trauma, this is THE book for you. If you’re a trauma sage, McDonald offers a few novel ways of thinking about trauma and its role in our lives. New to me, at least, and since I’m a general audience, this is chockablock full of great information that can help us heal and be kinder to ourselves.

Early on she wrote: “undo what you think you know about trauma and replace it with what we know to be true.”

Whether it’s our religion, our culture, our workplace, or our biological families, we’re taught that we’re broken, that trauma breaks us and that we’re sad broken people, living sad broken lives, just barely coping because of all our triggers and symptoms.

WRONG. McDonald provides a healthy vision normalizing trauma. Our systems go off when we’re in emergency mode, and then they “toggle off,” McDonald wrote, if we have someone to help us retrain our nervous systems. But if we don’t have help toggling off, then we’re chronically feeling in danger, living inside a “never-ending feedback loop.”

She reframes the trauma response as as weakness to being rooted in strength. We are not weak. We are not dysfunctional. One component she discusses is moral injury as a component in the trauma experience. We’re haunted by the moral injury that accompanies trauma. McDonald says that you feel you have failed morally or your moral structures failed you. When this happens, you develop an inability to trust yourself or others. This is why safety is the number one principle/pillar in the TI Framework. Restoring our safety is essential for future health and wellness.

Triggers are about survival. Sometimes they’re so deeply within us, that we’re unaware they exist. She wrote “…triggers do not exist to remind us of what we should avoid. They exist so we do not forget, so that we integrate what has so far gone unintegrated. They are signs that there are things that we have not yet processed, sings there is work to be done.”

I had an aha moment while reading this book. In 1991 I was sexually assaulted. I repressed this knowledge for 20 years. Repression/suppression is my go-to coping method, as is disassociation. Immediately after, in 1991-1992, other than some “acting out” with binge drinking and casual sex, I was fine. A few months after being sexually assaulted I stayed with a classmate over the holiday break and played Tetris on her Nintendo for hours at a time. McDonald wrote: “Playing Tetris on your phone is a therapeutic tool.” Reader, I healed myself. Studies show that Tetris is “an effective adjunctive therapy for PTSD. It can mitigate intrusive memories and thoughts, potentially to help prevent the development… Studies suggest that playing the game for 20-60 minutes a day can lower your baseline anxiety level.” The study is by Oisin Butler et al.

She reminded me that we are both harmed and healed through relationships. This is key to why I wrote my book. Library workers– kind, caring, empathetic library workers– can heal with our stabilizing presence in someone’s life. McDonald mentioned “the first-grade teacher who remind you every day that you belong can counter the fact that you feel like your only job at home is to be invisible.” Her next example is the “bus driver who always shows up at the exact time with a smile on her face,” reminds us that reliability exists. Yeah, yeah, job creep. Not all librarians are reliable. Many are.

This is powerful: “the truth is, we all hold the keys to someone’s relational home.”

I could end on that, but there are two more things:

One, McDonald described how the pandemic and staying at home shut down her life (and ours too), but that the gift in that was that she had time to learn new hobbies. She acknowledges her privilege by reminding readers that not everyone had/has the luxury, the free time, the energy to try and sustain hobbies. Hobbies require input from working memory. When we’re triggered, this part of the brain isn’t operative. If we can cultivate working memory, we can “restore relative homeostasis to the brain.” She reminded me that some hobbies help us complete the stress cycle that we don’t learn to complete.

And two: tiny joys. This aligns with what we know about gratitude. Lots of advice abounds about counting gratitude as a practice to help us slow down and appreciate what positives exist in our lives instead of ruminating on what someone did to us at work that day. McDonald suggested we think the solution to a big problem is a big solution. But we’re wrong. Little joys do the trick.

This is beautiful: “Joy is an anchor-heavy, solid, reliable. It sinks to the ocean floor and tethers us so we are not unmoored but can only wander so far.”

trauma-informed pedagogy

Yesterday I presented about the trauma-informed framework. And pedagogy. My TI-pedagogy has its basis in feminist praxis. There are lots of areas in which the framework and feminist pedagogy align, so it’s not too much of a stretch for me.

TI/TR (trauma-responsive) has effected my work with students in the classroom because I’ve expanded my empathy and caretaking of them. It was already pretty good, probably way better than many instructors across various disciplines, definably above average.

When swapping tales with PhDs (I have the terminal MLS) about interactions with students, it seems like lots of them are hard-asses. No late work. No meetings outside of class. This one person’s attitude seemed really harsh. They suggested that students are asking too much, feeling too entitled. I see their point. Faculty are not well-paid, but since COVID many colleges and universities expect faculty and staff to prostrate themselves for students, without compensation or reducing teaching load or other considerations.

While my classrooms are fairly well trauma-informed, I can always learn more. The best source by far is Trauma informed pedagogies (springer link).

real self care [book review]

One of my favorite new books focused on self care is Real self care by Pooja Lakshmin. If you’ve heard/seen me speak, or read my book, you know my ambivalence about self-care. It’s essential, but… I mentioned one of Lakshmi’s strategies at my talk at the LJ & SLJ public library youth services leadership summit in March, which I’ll expand on soon.

Taking care of ourselves is vital. Otherwise, we cannot help others, whether those are family, friends, colleagues, or our communities. Corporations are cashing in on self-care as the newest money-making wellness craze. Anything to make a dollar, right? The global wellness industries targeting women was valued at $4.4 trillion in 2020. And, instead of improving working conditions and organizational behaviors, as well as committing to systemic changes to upset the dominant paradigm, many workplaces don’t acknowledge their role in creating toxic cultures. Institutions/organizations escape accountability for their actions (or non-actions) by promoting wellness and self-care to their workers, without backing up their theatrics with actual changes like flexible work, subsidized support for caregivers, or safe/brave spaces where we can calm down after anxiety attacks in the workplace. And self-care is something we do on our own time, at home, to recover from the daily indignities, betrayals, micromanagement, micro aggressions, and other fun things happening to us in our workplaces.

Lakshmin says that real self-care is “radical work.” And she provides a healthy framework for crafting an individualized approach to your self care. She says that self-care that is not aligned with our personal values does us harm. Her program requires us getting real about our values and priorities.

She wrote: “…our true selves are located in our daily choices , and when you use faux self-care as a coping method for escape, you don’t have to make any real world decisions at all.” Escapist self care isn’t healthy. It’s a short term solution that doesn’t promote growth, healing, resilience (another concept I’m ambivalent about).

If human touch is highly valued, then a monthly massage aligns with your values, and hence, is a solid way to restore your mind, body, and spirit. If you’re sensually oriented, then having aromas of lavender, bergamot, and/or lemon wafting through your space jibes with your values. Lakshmin proposes that when we thoughtlessly pursue self-care activities that don’t mesh with our priorities, then we’re sabotaging ourselves.

Those aren’t even the best parts of her work. She talk about how looking for hacks and shortcuts to give us more time isn’t useful when we use those extra minutes or hours to add more work to our plates. We’re not resting enough. Doing nothing enough. She indicts the “American Dream,” patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism as elements contributing to our experiences of burnout, overwhelm, and mental illness.

Something I emphasize in my presentations about trauma-informed and trauma-responsive libraries are boundaries as self-care. This is not a new notion, but it’s something I arrived at by talking with other librarians about how to do this work well, without letting the emotional labor and invisible labor kill us. Saying no is a great boundary, but not one that many of us have agency to use as a definitive response to bosses, managers, employers, clients, etc. Lakshmin offers a solid alternative, the pause.

“Your boundary is in your pause– you can say yes, you can say no, or you can negotiate.” This practice disrupts our good girl/good boy cultural programming to say yes to everything and extend our energy beyond our capabilities.

I hope my review sold you on reading this book. It’s perfect for those just learning about self-care because it may set you on a healthy part from the start. And it’s perfect for those of us who’ve read dozens of self-care/self-help books because Lakshmin’s suggestions are sharp and effective.

LJ & SLJ PUBLIC LIBRARY YOUTH SERVICES LEADERSHIP SUMMIT

Interior shot of Broward County Library (Main Library)

Spending 24 hours in Broward County, FL (Ft. Lauderdale) last week with library workers serving youth was my honor. I spoke for about an hour and answered questions about mental illness and how the trauma-informed framework provides guidance for supporting America’s youth and their mental illness issues.

My list of resources I referenced for the talk included (NOT in alphabetical order):